CNN.com posted an article today about two MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) students who developed a program they claim can accurately predict sexual orientation based on a person's Facebook friends."Project Gaydar" scanned the profiles of more than 1,500 Facebook users who identified themselves as gay, straight, or bisexual. Analysis revealed gay men had a higher proportion of homosexual friends than straight men.
The discovery that gay men have gay friends isn't a surprise. But, using this information, the Gaydar program was applied to 947 men who chose not to identify sexual orientation in their profiles. While the students could not confirm the accuracy of all 947 predictions, they personally knew 10 of the men were homosexuals and the program identified each of these men as gay.
Take a moment to re-read that last sentence and tell me it doesn't sound REALLY stupid.
On its face this was a poorly conceived study. But giving the kids at MIT the benefit of the doubt, I want to point out that it was an even more poorly written article. In the final paragraph the writer makes a point about statistical analysis revealing more about us than we may want to disclose in our online profiles.
Okay, I'll buy that. But if the point of the article was about privacy then that should have been flushed out a lot better. Because I'm left with the impression that the privacy angle was an afterthought and the only reason CNN highlighted this study is because it came out of MIT.
And regarding statistical analysis, this is simply a really bad example. People are on social networking sites to communicate with people who have similar backgrounds, lifestyles and interests. Gathering obvious information to make predictions about a persons sexual orientation, which you can only confirm were accurate 10 out of 947 times, is not analysis. It's called stereotyping.
Do better, MIT.
Hell, do better CNN too.
You needed a computer "PROGRAM" for this? And they call this research.